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BFG GeForce 7900 GTX OC 512MB PCI-E
While the BFG 7900 GTX OC is already overclocked 20MHz beyond NVIDIA's reference speeds on both the core and memory (670MHz / 820MHz [1.64GHz DDR] vs. 650MHz / 800MHz [1.6GHz DDR]), I decided to try and push things a little further. I wanted to see how much legroom I had, particularly because EVGA and XFX both offer higher-clocked versions of this card. XFX pushes their 7900 GTX XXX Edition the furthest, with clocks of 700MHz / 900MHz (1.8GHz DDR); EVGA's 7900 GTX Superclocked comes in at 690MHz / 880MHz (1.76GHz DDR).
I began, as usual, by slowly increasing the memory first in 10MHz increments and running a Quake 4 benchmark after each increase to do a quick stability check. When I started noticing problems at around 920MHz and 915MHz, I decided to knock it back to 900MHz. I don't like to push it to the very edge of stability when I overclock, a 10-20MHz "pillow' is where I like to leave it. Then I used the same procedure to slowly increase the core. Wouldn't you know that I started having stability issues once again when I reached just over 710MHz. So I backed it down to 700MHz. That's interesting, I've suddenly got myself the equivalent of XFX's XXX Edition. Apparently XFX really wanted to beat out the competition and go as close to the edge as possible. Let's see what sort of impact on performance our overclock has. 
Half-Life 2 @ 1024 x 768
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94
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FPS
120
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120
Half-Life 2 @ 1600 x 1200
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120
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120
Half-Life 2 @ 2048 x 1536
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120
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120
Quake 4 @ 1024 x 768
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120
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120
Quake 4 @ 1600 x 1200
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90
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120
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120
F.E.A.R. @ 1024 x 768
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F.E.A.R. @ 1600 x 1200
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120
F.E.A.R. @ 2048 x 1536
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120
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120
I can't say I'm really surprised about the lackluster overclocking results we see here. Considering that this is such a high-end part, it's expected to be pushed about as far as possible. Plus, this is already an overclocked card right out of the box (albeit by a small margin). What we can take away from this is that if you compare the most overclocked version of the 7900 GTX from any vendor (XFX), which is clocked at identical speeds to my overclocked results, there is practically no difference in performance between it and the BFG 7900 GTX OC. One thing I'd like to mention is that there have been some reports on various forums about problems with overclocked versions of the 7900 GTX. The problems users have experienced seem to point to stability issues tied to pushing these cards too far on stock cooling. It seems like this is more of a minority issue than anything, but there are a couple of reasons why buying BFG's 7900 GTX might be a better idea than buying XFX's or EVGA's. First of all, it's clocked lower, so it's less prone to stability issues. But the best part is BFG's reputation for great service. If you do have stability issues and you end up needing a replacement, BFG's going to be one of the easier vendors to deal with and you can expect pretty fast turn-around time through them from what I've heard. It's important that you know the card I had for testing was rock-solid, and this should give you some level of comfort because, guess what... it isn't a press sample sent to us after being hand-picked by a BFG rep. We actually purchased this BFG 7900 GTX OC 512MB on Newegg.com a few weeks ago. As a matter of fact, now that we're done with it, we're selling it on eBay and donating the proceeds to a good cause - assuming you think TheTechLounge is a good cause, that is. If you'd like to buy it from us, we'd love to sell it to you. Hell, I'll even autograph it if that will make you happy.
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